First Post.
First Pig.
I've been trolling this site for years now, off and on, trying to get myself a pig on public land.
I put in a lot of miles on the road and on the trail, so this was very satisfying, I felt like Captain Ahab... I think I'm gonna read that again.
I started with my deer rifle at FHL and that evolved to the Bow at LS. I started solo, but my obsession has hooked a couple of friends that go with me now.
Here are the details..
On opening day we just missed a group of hogs crossing the trail right in front of us, according a another hunter that chased them. Upon scouting the area we found a hole in the fence with some fresh sing.
Our tactics for this trip were to post up near that hole in the fence line and wait for someone to spook some pigs out of the area, through the hole in the fence. We got one taker early on, but my buddy moved too abruptly to grab his bow, and the pig turned around and ran. Not too much later, my buddy was taking a leak, I told him to piss away from our spot, so he left his bow behind and walked down the fence line. Just as he finished it sounded like a freight train coming our way, ‘shoosh shoosh shoosh’, the sound of about 8 pigs trotting through the oak leaves. I stood and drew before they could see me. I targeted the leader, but he looked too big, so I fell back to the middle of the pack and led her in the head from about 25 yards, but she was moving too fast and my shot landed in the ham. I've gotta increase my pull strength from 60lb to 75lb.
My shot was a quartering away shot that was about 3 inches too far back, so it went in the front of the ham and out just behind the ribs. No lungs, no heart.
Bow hunting is nuts! If you don’t get a good kill shot (like me) you have to track the blood trail for a long time, 5 hours in our case. The mistake we made was to begin tracking almost immediately. We found her not too far from where we shot her bed down in some brush along a fence line, but we spooked her and she ran 3x that far where we finally found her. Too bad she didn’t run toward the truck! Tracking the blood trail was mostly fun, but there were some really challenging and slow sections where there were these little red leaves growing under the grass and oak leaves on the ground that were exactly the same color as the blood.
It was an all day affair, on the trail at 7am, shot at 9am, discovered at 2pm, gutted by 3pm and at the road about 6pm.
It was interesting skinning a pig for the first time after doing 2 bucks. They have a lot more fat and that hide is tough. The head felt like it weighed 10lb, like a bowling ball! Next time I might take the head off in the field. We found an old fence post in a gully and used that to carry her most of the way out and then drug her up the steep stuff.
She was 50lb at the butcher, they say I'll get about 25lb of meat.
Cheers,
View attachment 84393
First Pig.
I've been trolling this site for years now, off and on, trying to get myself a pig on public land.
I put in a lot of miles on the road and on the trail, so this was very satisfying, I felt like Captain Ahab... I think I'm gonna read that again.
I started with my deer rifle at FHL and that evolved to the Bow at LS. I started solo, but my obsession has hooked a couple of friends that go with me now.
Here are the details..
On opening day we just missed a group of hogs crossing the trail right in front of us, according a another hunter that chased them. Upon scouting the area we found a hole in the fence with some fresh sing.
Our tactics for this trip were to post up near that hole in the fence line and wait for someone to spook some pigs out of the area, through the hole in the fence. We got one taker early on, but my buddy moved too abruptly to grab his bow, and the pig turned around and ran. Not too much later, my buddy was taking a leak, I told him to piss away from our spot, so he left his bow behind and walked down the fence line. Just as he finished it sounded like a freight train coming our way, ‘shoosh shoosh shoosh’, the sound of about 8 pigs trotting through the oak leaves. I stood and drew before they could see me. I targeted the leader, but he looked too big, so I fell back to the middle of the pack and led her in the head from about 25 yards, but she was moving too fast and my shot landed in the ham. I've gotta increase my pull strength from 60lb to 75lb.
My shot was a quartering away shot that was about 3 inches too far back, so it went in the front of the ham and out just behind the ribs. No lungs, no heart.
Bow hunting is nuts! If you don’t get a good kill shot (like me) you have to track the blood trail for a long time, 5 hours in our case. The mistake we made was to begin tracking almost immediately. We found her not too far from where we shot her bed down in some brush along a fence line, but we spooked her and she ran 3x that far where we finally found her. Too bad she didn’t run toward the truck! Tracking the blood trail was mostly fun, but there were some really challenging and slow sections where there were these little red leaves growing under the grass and oak leaves on the ground that were exactly the same color as the blood.
It was an all day affair, on the trail at 7am, shot at 9am, discovered at 2pm, gutted by 3pm and at the road about 6pm.
It was interesting skinning a pig for the first time after doing 2 bucks. They have a lot more fat and that hide is tough. The head felt like it weighed 10lb, like a bowling ball! Next time I might take the head off in the field. We found an old fence post in a gully and used that to carry her most of the way out and then drug her up the steep stuff.
She was 50lb at the butcher, they say I'll get about 25lb of meat.
Cheers,
View attachment 84393
